A change in vocation does not change Jim Schuster’s love for the church

Jim Schuster is director of evangelization and adult faith formation at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Arlington. ELIZABETH A. ELLIOTT | CATHOLIC HERALD

Jim Schuster’s life was heading in the direction of the
priesthood. Until it wasn’t.

The now the director of evangelization and adult faith
formation at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Arlington spent five years at Mount
St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., studying for the Diocese of Peoria, Ill.

“I was probably the most surprised out of anybody when God
called me out of (the seminary),” he said. “I was pretty confident that was
what He wanted me to do with my life, and then He started steering me in a new
direction.”

In high school, Schuster said there was a big discrepancy
between what he believed intellectually and the way he was living his life.

While studying at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, he experienced a turning point.

He went to college with the attitude of saying to God, “I
know that my faith has more to offer me than what I’m really experiencing now,”
he said. “I wanted God to show me what it was in college.”

In college, Schuster was involved with the choir and
community at the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center. At one Mass, the Gospel was
about Bartimaeus. The priest enthusiastically told the congregation they needed
to cry out with everything they have, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me,”
said Schuster.

It stirred something in him and he remembered his father
quoting Mother Angelica about being called to be saints. “As I struggled with
that, I thought that maybe I can’t do it, but God could do it in me,” he said.
“It was a pivotal moment in my life.”

Schuster said God started working out the sinful habits that
he was struggling with. “It melted away in about six months,” he said. “It was
all grace and all a matter of telling God you have permission to do this in my
life. That was when God reached me in a personal way.”

Schuster served as lay director for one retreat program in
college. “Those experiences of helping other people come to encounter Christ in
the way I had, and seeing them experience joy and healing in their lives as a
result, that stirred it up in me to say why would I want to do anything else?”

He sensed a calling to the priesthood and entered seminary
right after college. He envisioned himself as a parish priest.

“I was always drawn to parish ministry and that is something
that hasn’t gone away,” he said. “I see the parish as the place where the
rubber meets the road. It’s the frontlines of pastoral ministry, and there is
potential for the parish to be a hub or outpost for evangelization.”

Schuster said toward the end of his time in the seminary,
God started talking to him in prayer about revisiting marriage as a possibility
again. After leaving seminary he worked in youth ministry at St. John the
Apostle Church in Leesburg. He worked there for two years before moving to St.
Bernadette Church in Springfield, where he had the opportunity to work with a
longtime friend Jonna. They married in 2011.

“We always talked about working full-time in ministry
together because that is a core passion of our lives is pursuing God and
helping others know Him,” said Schuster.

They worked together for nearly seven years until this past
March. “The hard thing was leaving the chance to work alongside my wife because
we love sharing that mission together, and enjoy discovering new things and new
approaches in ministry and sharing that journey,” he said.

Schuster tries to apply what he’s learned to his role at St.
Charles. “You have to win trust with people and largely it comes through
listening and making sure they feel protected and safe with you,” he said. “I
find that before I ever encounter somebody God is already doing something with
them. He has already reached out before I have reached out,” he said.

When Schuster gives talks he leaves space at the end to
invite God into the conversation. “Leaving that room for God to act in the
moment and move in the moment has made a significant difference in the
fruitfulness of my ministry,” he said.

He has a favorite part of the job. “It is the moments when I
get to see someone encountering Christ in a personal way. Whenever there’s an
encounter with Christ, He always brings new measures of freedom, new measures
of joy, clarity in life,” said Schuster. “The times when I get to witness
people experiencing new life and new liberty in Christ, that is what it’s all about.
That’s what I enjoy the most.”